“We need to liberate ourselves from the courts, ballot boxes, school system, church, and all other agencies that command us to stay in ‘our colonized place.’ This oppression of the native people is so deeply rooted in the capitalist system that it cannot be completely eliminated without eliminating capitalism itself.”
This September 8 Howard Adams would have turned 98. The Métis socialist was a key theorist and activist of the Red Power movement of the 1960s and 70s, who intertwined the politics of Indigenous liberation and working class revolution. Now, at a time of economic and ecological crisis, his ideas could not be more relevant, yet he is hardly known.
Most settlers on Turtle Island are more likely to know European socialists like Marx and Engels, than an Indigenous socialist like Adams. But you can’t understand one without the other: Engels developed his anti-capitalist critique based on inspiration from egalitarian Indigenous societies (specifically the Haudenosaunee), and Adams used Marxism to develop a theory and practice of Indigenous liberation.
The intersection of autobiography with colonization
Adams was born in 1921 in a Métis community in the prairies. His great-grandfather fought with Louis Riel against the early Canadian state, and he grew up in the shadow of their defeat and ongoing colonial oppression. The businesses were white-owned and used racism to pay Indigenous workers less than white workers, and the schools taught the history and language of European colonizers. Facing the combined impact of colonization, economic exploitation, national and racial oppression, Adams described how the first response is often not to fight oppression but to internalize it: “I accepted the stereotyped image of an Indian and integrated it into my consciousness. And I despised myself.”
This led him to reject his family, leave his community and join the RCMP in the 1940s. But like all revolutionaries, he radicalized through a process of struggle: inspiration from the CCF in Saskatchewan caused him to leave the RCMP, anguish at the death of his mother caused him to realize his internalized oppression, and experience from campus activism and the Black power movement built pride in his own heritage and taught him skills in organizing. As he described,
“Through my participation in the black people’s civil rights struggle I could see myself struggling beside my people at home for the same freedom…The more I became involved, the clearer colonialism became. I was very moved when I heard Malcolm X speak to the students about black nationalism…Like black people, I began to reject my feelings of inferiority and shame, and to become proud of my Indian heritage and native nation….As deeply colonized people we were inferiorized, timid and submissive, but, we were also filled with pain and anger. We began our struggle against oppression with a roar that was heard across the nation. Shortly, the masses of Aboriginal people from coast to coast were on the march. The struggles of the 1960s had begun.”
Returning to teach at the University of Saskatchewan, Adams connected with a previous generation of Métis socialists and became a leader and theorist of the Red Power movement. He wrote Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View in 1975 to “examine history and autobiography and their intersection with colonization,” reinterpreting his experiences of racism and internalized oppression with as a product of centuries of colonialism: “To Indians and Metis the basic cause of poverty is not the psychological or personal weakness of individuals but the economic conditions of the capitalist system.”
Canada from a Native point of view
According to Eurocentric versions of history, Canada was a savage wilderness until it was discovered by Europeans, who built a peaceful nation based on a mutual fur trade. Adams combined Indigenous history and Marxist theory to expose colonial history:
“Before the Europeans arrived, Indian society was governed without police, without kings and governors, without judges, and without a ruling class…There were no poor and needy by comparison with other members, and likewise no wealthy and privileged; as a result, on the prairies there were no classes and no class antagonisms among the people… Indian communal society was transformed into an economic class of labourers by European fur trading companies, particularly the Hudsons Bay Company. …Businessmen of Europe realized that they would need a large supply of labor to obtain resources from the new continents. Natives furnished this large supply of cheap labor. Since labor was an important item of cost in the production of goods, European businessmen wanted to get the greatest amount of labor for the least possible pay, and the purpose of racism was to reduce native people to a subhuman level where they could be freely exploited. Racism therefore arose from economic factors inherent in capitalism.”
The fur trading economy encountered competition from the growing industrial economy. Whereas the Canadian state celebrates its anniversary July 1 and sings the praises of the “nation builder” John A Macdonald, Adams showed how it emerged as a competition between two economic systems over who would continue to colonize Indigenous land:
“The conflict between two different economic systems—the old economic system represented by the Hudson’s Bay Company and the new industrial system. This new ruling class of British financiers and Canadian industrialists had consolidated its position in Eastern Canada and was now extending its empire westward across the prairies. They wanted not only the land and the resources of the Northwest, but also a capitalist order that would consolidate and further their economic enterprises, so it was natural that they encountered opposition from the old order of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The clash of these two economic systems fueled the hostilities of 1869-70 in the Northwest, which resulted in Rupert’s Land being brought under the constitutional authority of the government in Ottawa, the seat of the industrial empire.”
Adams also described how Churches were used to promote subordination and to stabilize the nuclear family to provide more Indigenous workers for the labour poor; how the slaughter of the buffalo was used to starve Indigenous people off their land; and how Mounted Police were used to corral them onto reserves, to clear the way for the railroad and the capitalist economy: “The Indians, who had lived in the area for thousands of years without police, saw no reason for the establishment of a force in the Northwest since there was no serious disorder or lawlessness in the country…The Mounties were not ambassadors of goodwill or uniformed men sent to protect the Indians; they were the colonizer’s occupational forces and hence the oppressors of Indians and Métis.”
According to Canadian history, Louis Riel was a lone rebel. But as Adams explained there was widespread opposition to the Canadian state in the northwest, which united Indigenous and settler communities.
“The term ‘Riel rebellion’ for the hostilities of 1885 is not only misleading but incorrect because it implies that Louis Riel alone was responsible for the hostilities. The truth is that he entered only the later stages of a long struggle involving many groups in the Northwest. The war of 1885 was the culmination of a complex struggle that had arisen over the previous two decades between the people of the Northwest and the industrial rulers of Ottawa. Western protests were made by local merchants, farmers, settlers, workers, Indians, and Metis, and their demands essentially centered around the need for a responsible government to make economic and land reforms.”
But Macdonald scapegoated Riel and used anti-Native racism to divide the resistance and justify state repression:
“The showcase trial of Riel was given great prominence and dragged out for three main reasons. First and most important, it diverted attention from the actual economic and political issues that forced the Northwest people into confrontation with Ottawa. Second, by blaming a single individual for the ‘rebellion’ the federal government was able to obscure the fact that the struggle was one between the ruling industrial class in Ottawa and the settlers, farmers, natives, and workers of the Northwest. Third, it further justified the large-scale military occupation of the Northwest by publicly making Riel appear as a dangerous leader…By hanging Riel, Ottawa silenced revolutionary and separatist ideas in the Northwest for many years”
Red Power
But in the 1960s these ideas rose again. Adams founded the Saskatchewan Native Action Committee (SNAC), and used the federal election as a platform to support Indigenous movements:
“We understood that political parties were intimately connected to the capitalist system that impoverished our people. For this reason, we believed that all parties, Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP, were incapable of making real changes. They could only make minor reforms that would never provide lasting benefits to Indians and Metis. Therefore, SNAC’s candidate, Carole Lavalee of the Cowesses reserve, ran as an independent…. Her campaign for Aboriginal people was based on two central issues: self-determination and autonomous control of our local industries and Native communities…She asserted that Trudeau’s promises for a ‘Just Society’ were only useless rhetoric. In fact, conditions had actually worsened during Trudeau’s regime.”
In 1969 he was elected leader of the Métis Society of Saskatchewan and launched the newspaper New Breed to expose the colonial past and present, and to debate the way forward:
“Ever since the government destroyed the buffalo economy one hundred years ago, it has deliberately kept our communities economically poor and undeveloped. We have never been compensated for this total destruction of our economy. Instead we have been forced to live in poverty, often on welfare, and without any political power. Now we must rebuild our communities economically. Since the governments owe us millions of dollars in compensation, we must demand this money, and use it to develop our communities, so they will provide a means of living for all of us…However, the development of our communities must be done on a communal, co-operative, socialist basis
He also tried to unionize Indigenous park workers, and again found that racism was the Achilles heel of working class unity:
“Most Indian and Métis workers were rural proletariat. This class consists of people who work in farm labour, ranching, fishing, logging and hunting. They are primarily producers who are compelled by circumstances to work seasonally or part-time in subsistence production. They are the lowest paid and most oppressed group of the working class…The white society had excluded racial minority workers from the better and higher paying jobs. As a result, distrust was generated between the two groups. This racial condition prevented class solidarity. Such action deflects anger towards each working class, rather than against the corporate employers. The sense of class consciousness of the park workers was not strong enough to make them feel their loyalty to other park workers and to the Aboriginal people who supported them in a class struggle for better wages, improved working conditions and the right of collective bargaining.”
From 1970-73 he chaired the Red Power League of Saskatchewan, and drew on lessons from history to support the national liberation movement in Quebec against Trudeau’s War Measures Act:
“Many workers and unions in Quebec are in the forefront of struggles against the capitalism system. Nevertheless, there comes a time when all oppressed people must join together in a united struggle and form a new revolutionary class. It appears that this new class will comprise women, youth, natives, and workers. At the same time, the ruling class must be prevented from isolating any one group from the remainder, as they did in 1885 and again in 1970 during the Quebec crisis.”
The politics of colonization and radical nationalism
The Red Power movement declined in the 1970s, along with other movements, but Indigenous struggles rose again in the 1990s. Howard Adams wrote A Tortured People: the Politics of Colonization in 1995 to reflect on the partial victories of the Red Power movement:
“Some of the more severe chains of colonization were severed. We made some gains in welfare management, the schools, and we reduced the Catholic Church’s control over our people. Although the colonial state machinery was not smashed and aboriginal people were still excluded from positions of power, there were some changes toward political independence and freedom in local administration…Major structural changes were not made to the state infrastructure, but some modifications in the Aboriginal people’s material conditions have occurred. Housing improved, many reserves and Métis communities now have electricity, running water, and telephones.”
Drawing on the pan-African Marxist Franz Fanon, and his own experience of being marginalized by conservative forces within Métis organization, he developed a critique of neocolonialism and the way in which the Canadian state intervened to demobilize the movement through divide-and-conquer tactics:
“Governments did not get into the business of supporting these organizations until the 1960s when the restlessness of native people and red power posed a potential threat to their administration…This collaborator class created by massive government grants has taken over leadership of major Indian, Metis and Inuit organizations, as well as the communities. The purpose is to maintain suppression over the quasi-liberation movements that flourished in the 1960s. We must not let the middle-class native elites mislead us into believing that our people can achieve freedom and justice through assimilation, integration, a good education, small business ownership, etc.”
He also differentiated between the “revolutionary nationalism” of countries of the global south—where majority Indigenous populations could overthrow an imperial state controlled from afar—and the “radical nationalism” of Indigenous populations reduced to a minority in settler colonial states, who could combine self-determination with class struggle:
“Revolutionary nationalism in this sense is not applicable to the native people of Canada. They are simply not numerous enough to be able to overthrow the government of the country and recapture the entire land according to their justified aboriginal claims, nor are they powerful enough to form a separate state within the dominion. Their nationalism is therefore best defined as ‘radical nationalism’; their goals are economic, social, and cultural autonomy, and control over all political affairs concerning the natives as a nation, beginning with complete local control of Indian reserves, Métis communities, and native urban ghettos…Because of racism we are the most exploited and oppressed of all the workers. At the moment the success of the native movement depends on its ability to develop a radical thrust and upon the strength of its red nationalism. Mobilization of the masses of Indian and Métis is still centered around local community struggles. However, as the struggle widens, social class features will gradually become more prominent and the movement will turn into a class struggle…Radical nationalism will mean greater class consciousness. It develops the understanding that a native liberation struggle is essentially the same struggle as that of the working class and all oppressed people against a capitalist ruling class. In this way, Indians and Métis can build alliances with workers and other oppressed and colonized groups of white society.”
September 8 is also the anniversary of Adams’ passing, on his 80th birthday. He didn’t live to see the new wave of Indigenous struggles, which are leading the climate justice movement. But his ideas live, and continue to be developed, by other Indigenous socialists. Historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz dedicated An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States to Adams, while Dene scholar Glen Coulthard wrote Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition using Adams’ method—combing Marx and Fanon with contemporary Indigenous struggles. As Coulthard summarized, “rendering Marx’s theoretical frame relevant to a comprehensive understanding of settler-colonialism and Indigenous resistance requires that it be transformed in conversation with the critical thought and practices of Indigenous peoples themselves.”
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